Where the Iron Crosses Grow

The Crimea 1941-44

By: Robert Forczyk

Narrated by: Michael Prichard

Length: 13 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

The Crimea was one of the crucibles of the war on the Eastern Front, where first a Soviet and then a German army were surrounded, fought desperate battles, and were eventually destroyed. The fighting in the region was unusual for the Eastern Front in many ways, in that naval supply, amphibious landings, and naval evacuation played major roles, while both sides were also conducting ethnic cleansing as part of their strategy - the Germans eliminating the Jews and the Soviets purging the region of Tartars.

From 1941, when the Soviets first created the Sevastopol fortified region, the Crimea was a focal point of the war in the East. German forces under the noted commander Manstein conquered the area in 1941-42, which was followed by two years of brutal colonization and occupation before the Soviet counteroffensive in 1944 destroyed the German 17th Army.

©2014 Robert Forczyk (P)2015 Tantor

Good but wordy

The story and the region are great. What should be left out was the spelling out of each and every title, caliber of gun, and affiliation to platoon, company, regiment, or battalion. A nice map as well.

An informative work!

This book centers on the little discussed Crimean front during the also under studied, in the West, Russian Front of the Second World War.

I would say this is not for someone just beginning to study this subject, but for someone with a decent grasp on the history already. This work expands one's knowledge on the subject.

One might say overly detailed and perhaps tedious at times, however, I didn't think so.

Besides the general WWII aspects covered, some general history of the region is also discussed.

Great unknown history!

Excellent history relevant to today s news. Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxx xxx xx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx

Superb History

Sure h a great and informative piece of work, I found many facts that I had not previously known, and the narrator kept me engaged in the story throughout, highly recommended.

Remarkable story with too much noise …

I recently had an opportunity to listen to this story on Audible. I have an absolute fascination for true WWII stories such as Soldat, Japanese Destroyer Captain and many other numerous Holocaust survival biographies. I jumped in with both feet to experience the years of horror unleashed in Central Europe to understand a little more about the engagements between the Wehrmacht and Red Army.

Even though this is a well written history of the Crimean theater, it suffers from the mentioning of numerous individuals both important and less so, battalions, brigades, divisions and armies. Many acronyms of organizations also confuse the story further. Numerous locations within the Crimea where relentless battles took place back and forth are also listed in minutiae. Sadly, the author does not give sufficient accounts of individual foot soldier experiences whilst providing some high-level command discourse and thinking. That is not to say, all experiences are ignored as there are many cases of bravery and sacrifice detailed within the pages. However, the history feels very clinical and removed from the personal experiences of individuals in horrific bloody battles.

I believe that this a book is better served for a reader than a listener. Perhaps then with context such as detailed maps and images of locations and individuals the story can be better digested. The narration of this book is extremely poor adding to my negative experience.

Not for a casual listener, but has a lot of info

Personally I thought the narrator did a good job. This is not a casual book, you definitely need some background knowledge or some geography to keep things straight, otherwise it's probably going to be just a lot of names and troop numbers. I learned a lot overall and was glad that there was some pre and post WW2 history as well.

Hard work

80% Of the book is like a dump of a detailed event log of the Crimean wars. Hard to get through. Very few stories of what happened on the ground, earning those iron crosses.

Very detailed

It is a very thorough historical account. It would benefit from supporting maps and tables, because it can be tough to process statistics and events for places you are not intimately familiar with.

Hoping for more..

Great WWII campaign that should have had many personal stories instead of all the stupid and inane facts. The narrator would have been fine but he kept saying “In-fan-te-ree instead of saying “In-fan-tree”. It drove me crazy and almost prevented me from finishing the book.
There should have been dozens of great personal accounts of who won “those iron crosses” instead of all the bullshit...

Fascinating, if dry, look at little known campaign

I liked it. loved the rich history of the Crimea area and how that was woven into the story. only caution is the perspective is taken mostly from post battle reports and is kinda lacking the "human" story. didn't bother me but it is a dry listen for some